Many famous diarists there are. Let's have a look at their inspiration and consistency. This will be out of chronology, based purely on flashes from history.
Anne Frank: a very good diarist. She had reason to be: cooped up, full of emotion, driven by circumstance, brimming with intelligence and curiosity.
Madame de Stael: 18th-c. French aristocrats had little else to do but document their days in the most excruciating detail. This ended only in 1789.
Samuel Pepys: persnickety, a bit; living in an interesting post-revolutionary, neo-royalist time.
James Lees-Milne: perhaps one of my favorite authors. He was an early and instrumental administrative member of Great Britain's National Trust. His diaries of war-time London are riveting and exquisitely written in both personal and historical terms. I treasure all the volumes of his diary that I have.
My grandfather: kept a diary in very small script from his days on the Western Front, July 1918-Dec. 1919, under fire, in places he termed "most unhealthy". I still have the original.
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